hola! saucy bagle here fires time on watt pad. here is the prologue to my new story if you think its worth continuing please comment and say so and if you think i should give up say that to thanks for reading!
note- the following story takes place in a world like our but to be sure it is not it is in fact in many ways very different the year is 1924, in our world the events of the great war were still reverberation through out the world but there a war was brewing one that would also rock the foundation of there time.
1924- clandestine proving ground
the fog was thick, but five men were visible from the grey and between theme a Wooden platform with a canvas covering over a sleek object.. the first was a short portly man with a brief case in one hand and an umbrella in the other he sported a bowler hat that sat on his head as if by accident. he wore a light Cotton suite despite the chill weather. the man standing next to him also wore a suite but the similarities ended there. he was a tall imperious man with a thin line mouth and gold rimmed glasses siting pointedly on his nose.
the other two men were obviously military men both tall and dressed sharply in the blue uniforms of the American Aeroforce. they both wore the gold braids on there collars and on there epaulets denoting themselves as commanders. as if this was not enough they both had what looked like a pound of brass on the shirt fronts, in short men who didn't enjoy having there time wasted. the fifth and final man was clearly a pilot short and taught and was equipped with a heavy leather flight jacket. on his forehead he boasted an impressive set of goggles with a dazzlings arey of knobs and switches that only a pilot could make heads or tails of he was a maverick in Americas fleging aeroforce a man who would be dammed if he ended up a paper pusher and flying a desk.
the short man with the bowler spoke first
"ah gentlemen it appears that were all here" after introductions he revealed his name to be Charles Morris
"my collage Dr. harrowsbern" the tall man bowed his head in acknowledgement.
"i trust we all know why were here?"
"were here to test a new bird you boys have built for us"
"beg pardon sir! but were here for much more" he said slightly taken aback
"please clarify then, what are we here to do?" said the captain slightly annoyed and the civilians bravado.
"were here to make history!" he said excitedly.
silence fell over the men "very well ill start from the beginning."
"as you all know we live in the age of steam, and the worlds aeroforces and most other modern machines use the steam gearator for flight we use the steam bird, A heaver than air forward flight machines, but it was not all ways so". "the first "aircraft", i use the term lightly here were little more than bags of warm air rising to the sky for the first time."
"but as it often is with new technologies it was soon adapted for war," after some experimenting the first great sky ship the Prometheus sallied, and so the age of the sky ships began. nations spent fortunes and emptied vaults to have the largest and newest ship. however they were slow and lumbering many included foot thick armor and huge guns that fired great broadsides" so the only effective way to use them was tho line up and have at each other" "impressive but not effective" he chuckled. "
"now all this changed with the Napoleonic wars, the holy roman empire to be exact. the Empire was under attack form two fronts and a brilliant commander who's name has been lost to the annals of history" anyway this chap was tasked with defending his nations borders with only a hand full of light ships against a massive surge of french first rate ships. his idea was to use the ornothorptor a light ancestor of the aeroplane that had been used for scouting and short hops across land but never in combat. he developed the tracts of equipping the birds with a sharp shooter and buzzing the bridge of an enemy ship and killing the captain, most unsporting the french thought but effective nonetheless.
then came the real break-thought arming the birds them self's often with fire bombs to visit death on the massive ships. these tracts became so successful that nations soon realized that there massive fleets were obsolete before the were out of the yards. oh and please don't get me wrong the sky ships still have the place and uses and the big guns can still be very..persuasive however there predominance is over."
"this revolution was coincidentally timed exact with the advent of the modern steam engine and the nations of Europe scrambled to get the first steam bird in the air. Britain was first then France and Germany. you yanks were given some by the french during your fight for Independence, now as the first nations with the new technologies we still hold the edge in design..for now anyway
"this is all very interesting but please get to the point Mr. Morris" commented one of the captains
"i was getting to it" he said slightly flustered
"umm yes.. right. as I was saying we have held a technological edge. until today.."
gentlemen i give you the Templar class steam bird the first of its kind!"
as he said this he signaled to two men standing on the platform to sweep back the covering.beneath it lay a steam bird with clean lines and fresh paint.
this one id different thought the pilot i cant point it but... different. it came to him then smaller he thought she looks fast..but.. there! that blue light faintly pulsing in the fuselage what in hell?
"shes a pretty bird but what makes her so special?" the captain inquired.
"well we have a chap working with us a Dr. Albert Pendelton he has Ben working for years on this bird and what drives her". he walked over to the bird and opened a maintains panel and the light flooded out
"gentlemen i give you the cold fusion bird."
shocked faces all around for years the cold fusion reactor had been the holy grail of steam technology's it was light and mindbogglingly efficient and to learn it had not only been discovered but perfected into this bird the stood in front of took there breath away
"any way, I did say it was momentous"
"but how!" the captain spluttered
"well it was not easy but Dr. pendeltons breakthrough came in his use of th-"
he was cut off abruptly by a jab from the elbow of harrrowsburn and a look that could freeze water
"ohh yes" he said distractedly"....I'm not quite at liberty to explain its nuts and bolts right now..."
"anyway Capt...Winthrop" he aside looking briefly at his papers"you will have the honor of flying the first fusion bird, congratulation"
'indeed sir an hell of an honor"
well enough talking time to do what I'm paid for
he clambered up the ladder into the small cockpit seven feet off the ground he surveyed the instruments at his finger tips he saw the condenser angle lever his wireless set and head set and took a mental note of the large rudders and wing span despite its lightness of the airframe he looked to his left and right and say the dangerous gleam of his six Tesla-Edison repeating rifles hidden in the wings
he strapped in and looked at the brass and Worden panel there he saw his altitude pitch and roll meters his aerospeed indicator's his core temature he noticed was in to the negatives this is madness! he looked across the dash out side his eyes naturally aliened with his light sights the triple layered sights with a faint red glow accounted for flight para lax and gently illuminated the target outline. he looked further to the triple bladed prop. each curving gracefully to a tapered end he was ready...or am I?
well no point waiting he flipped the cover off a panel and spun up the crank start the bird thundered to life and the raw power he felt in the frame was a hell of a thing he did a final check and eased the throttle forward towards the runway.
at 700 feet he leveled off his tail lights blazing in the cold morning well come home he thought and vanished into the early dawn.
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please comment hope you enjoyed- saucy bagel
